I've been looking into buying a new computer for a while now, and the MacBook Pros just got an update. I already have a Macbook Pro 13 from mid 2014, but having a real hard time getting anything to playback realtime in DaVinci Resolve, I'm not after color correcting or doing noise reduction or anything like that on this machine, just to ingest, play and rough cutting the media from my Pocket Camera and Ursa Mini Pro. I really love the 13 inch form factor for traveling, the 15 inch is a bit large for me. Do you guys think the Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655 is fast enough to just playback 4.6k RAW 24/25fps in realtime from the Ursa Mini Pro?

With the new Blackmagic eGpu announced, this could be a very interesting combination!

I doubt you'll get far with any Intel graphics, and unfortunately you don't have a choice with the 13".The 15" with 4 GB VRAM should be OK if you don't do heavy (in particular temporal) effects. The 13" with the eGPU might be an even better solution, but you'll have to drag around another box.

Yeah, was thinking the same thing. I was wondering how the previous generation of MacBook Pro 13 was doing with the Intel Iris gpu in resolve, if anyone has experience with that, please let me know.

Well the eGPU sounds attractive to me, because you could use it as a dock on a desktop to connect your monitor, devices and charge with just one cable!

An alternative is the new Razer Blade 15 with GTX1070 and 4K screen, but they don't sell it here in Europe with a US Qwerty keyboard layout, and is too expensive to import from US. I'm also refusing to learn yet again another keyboard layout just because the manufacturer is unable to sell me the keyboard layout that I want in my region.

The 15" i9 version seems to perform pretty well according to geekbench.Way better than my aging 2010 Mac Pro 12 core, if the stats are to be believed.

I know geekbench doesn't paint the whole picture, but I'm wondering what kind of performance I would get from the 15" i9 with my 1080ti in an akitio node.

I have been looking at the iMac Pro, but it's out of my budget... but the new MacBook Pro is the runner up in performance (not far behind the trashcan Mac Pro). And the single core score is even higher than the iMac Pro.

It also looks to me that if you buy the eGPU from BMD, which is more powerful then the radeon 560 in the top spec Macbook Pro model, it still is a relatively weak gpu compared to the competition. That is of coarse when looking at benchmarks. Real world performance might differ.

That said, he eGPU comes to shine in combination with the 13 inch model.

Intel GPUs are really for browsing internet, so any "real" GPU shines compared to it.It's some solution for people with laptops, but combined price of new Macbook Pro+ eGPU is crazy high (for their final performance).1750£ for the cheapest new 13inch model starts to be crazy high, specially when this new models are not as reliable as older ones. Add Apple Care and you are at 2K£ for basic model. All what you get for the is 2.3GHz quad i5, 8GB RAM and 256 SSD. It's hard to call this spec Pro- price though is definitely Pro:) UK pricing seemed be high when Apple changed it last time to 1250£ for basic model, now it's on crazy level and I'm sure it will put off even some of the real apple fans. Not surprising Apple market share stays at same level for many years or even starts to decline.

Nick Verlinden wrote:Yeah, was thinking the same thing. I was wondering how the previous generation of MacBook Pro 13 was doing with the Intel Iris gpu in resolve, if anyone has experience with that, please let me know.

I've been using Resolve on a 2014 i5 Mac Mini with Intel integrated graphics and it has worked fine for the past nine months or so for basic editing and one-node color correction. But as soon as you start adding nodes, using optical flow, applying any of Resolve's built-in "looks," etc., it starts skipping frames. I use the MacMini for experimenting with different timelines and edits, but when I need to actually work on projects I'm using a MacPro.

I agree that the GPU is a weak spot, but I don't follow all the price comparisons.

Benchmark wise, this MBP (i9) performs on par with a 2013 MacPro, yet is less money when configured equally and has current technology inside (TB3 vs TB2).It even sits above last years iMacs in performance, so it looks like this is a capable machine, or am I missing something ?

It's all relative- yes performance is decent, but then for this money (Mackbook Pro with i9) you can buy a proper workstation with dual GTX 1080, which is at different level.If you have money then great, but otherwise it's really expensive option to work in Resolve (and still limited).

If you say that current machine gives you bit more power than one from 3 years and costs less then this is normal. This is how it should be. It should be actually substantially cheaper.

Just bought new 15” MBP yesterday with i9, 32GBram, and 1tb drive. Connected it to NAS using new Promise Sanlink 10g TB3 adapter to access shared projects with collabiration enabled. NAS does a consistent 1GBs up and down once all the SMB speed fixes are applied. Attached eGPU for extra power with Sonnet 650 and Vega Frontier card. For monitoring I’m using a Sonnet Echo Express TB3 with Decklink Mini Monitor 4k but only outputting to a 1080 monitor.

Unfortunately, this combo still stutters regardless of chacing codec/resolution, footage resolution, or number of nodes in the Color page. It would often stutter when no grading was applied. Sometimes it plays Ursa Mini Pro 4.6k ProRes 4444 without a hitch in a 4K timeline, but sometimes it stutters uncontroilably on HD footage in an HD timeline. As usual, FCPx handles this config flawlessly with 4k footage ina 4k timeline while monitoring at 4K. Resolve, as we all know, is picky.

Base iMac Pro connected to same NAS with 2-3x eGPUs ( same Vega Frontiers ) works beautifully. 36core PC with 4X Quadro p5000s on same network accessing same project also works great. The obvious conclusion that has been covered in this community at great length is that Resolve needs a significantly faster machine than any laptop with any configuration can provide. What’s confusing is why Blackmagic would design and sell an official eGPU meant primarily for laptops when it’s clear this combination isn’t consistent for an actual production. Maybe it’ll help with FCPx when it finally gets real eGPU support.

- Configured the processing type to Metal and selected only the Vega Frontier card for everything so the internal Radeon Pro and Iris cards are unused.

- Choosing 8bit or 10bit for monitoring out didn't seem to have an effect.

- Caching to ProRes 422HQ and ProRes 444 at 1080p both worked fine. Could see the Vega Frontier work a little harder when playing back the 444 but overall utilization was pretty low compared to actual rendering.

- Actual rendering used the Vega Frontier at %100 when rendering out cache files

Conclusion : It appears that the overhead of splitting up the processing between cards is a little too much for the new MBP to handle, so if you get a decent eGPU, stick with that card and only that card. The iMac Pro can split up processing between its internal card and 3 eGPUs without a problem and never appears to need caching. With all of this in mind I could see how the new Blackmagic eGPU would be a good addition to a new 15" MBP if it's used as the only processing unit. The addition of the USB, HDMI, and TB3 passthrough ports makes it a good option over any of the Sonnet boxes. But if you want more power out of your eGPU you'll have to go with the Sonnet 650w box and use a TB3 dock for everything else.

Ps its long known and adviced by BM that for multiple gpu useage, both gpus need to be idealy the same or at least roughly have the same performance and internal memory, otherwise the slow one will be the bottleneck .For memory the lowest mem card will determine the available mem for both cards.So in an unbalanced situation only select the fast card and disable useage of the slow.

I read somewhere that new macs do behind the scenes performance tuning in the first days after using the Mac for the very first time. Apparantly this can take some days to complete.I don't know how much of that is true, it sounds like voodoo to me... but perhaps, if true, this could partially be what you experienced ?Your followup report sounds encouraging, and what Glenn describes sounds logical.

I'll be keeping an eye on these MacBook Pro's.If Apple would stuff the internals of this MacBook Pro inside a Mac Mini (pro) that would really be nice...

Regarding voodoo, i only know of 3 learning (if you can call it that) periods/mechanismes for a new mac.1. Spolight indexing your harddrive(s) , which can be fast or take a longer time depending on storage attached and type (ssd/spinning)2. If the mac contains a socalled hybrid drive , which effectively is some sort of smart caching simply said, it takes a bit of time for it to be optimised with the stuff you mostly use.3. Then lastly, but is more for an always on machine, the content of the actual system memory gets also slowly filled with stuff you tend to use most/latest and the rest used for storage caching.So these 3 thing can effect performance diffrences over time during the initial use/startup of a new mac

- Configured the processing type to Metal and selected only the Vega Frontier card for everything so the internal Radeon Pro and Iris cards are unused.

- Choosing 8bit or 10bit for monitoring out didn't seem to have an effect.

- Caching to ProRes 422HQ and ProRes 444 at 1080p both worked fine. Could see the Vega Frontier work a little harder when playing back the 444 but overall utilization was pretty low compared to actual rendering.

- Actual rendering used the Vega Frontier at %100 when rendering out cache files

Conclusion : It appears that the overhead of splitting up the processing between cards is a little too much for the new MBP to handle, so if you get a decent eGPU, stick with that card and only that card. The iMac Pro can split up processing between its internal card and 3 eGPUs without a problem and never appears to need caching. With all of this in mind I could see how the new Blackmagic eGPU would be a good addition to a new 15" MBP if it's used as the only processing unit. The addition of the USB, HDMI, and TB3 passthrough ports makes it a good option over any of the Sonnet boxes. But if you want more power out of your eGPU you'll have to go with the Sonnet 650w box and use a TB3 dock for everything else.

Jacob, did you read the earlier posts in this thread that recommended going with only one GPU on the laptops? So buying the 15” with an internal discrete GPU and adding the eGPU may not be as beneficial as one might expect. Following the logic of using one GPU for the laptops, I’m thinking a tricked out 13” plus the eGPU may be a good choice.

rick.lang wrote:Jacob, did you read the earlier posts in this thread that recommended going with only one GPU on the laptops? So buying the 15” with an internal discrete GPU and adding the eGPU may not be as beneficial as one might expect. Following the logic of using one GPU for the laptops, I’m thinking a tricked out 13” plus the eGPU may be a good choice.

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I ideally want a setup that has power when I'm at my office, but that I can still work with on the road. The 13" is too small/underpowered for that.

Nick Verlinden wrote:It also looks to me that if you buy the eGPU from BMD, which is more powerful then the radeon 560 in the top spec Macbook Pro model, it still is a relatively weak gpu compared to the competition. That is of coarse when looking at benchmarks. Real world performance might differ.

That said, he eGPU comes to shine in combination with the 13 inch model.

The 580 IS a relatively weak GPU, in that it wasn't competitive with its nVidia contemporary, and it's a generation behind.

And as Andrew pointed out, a mediocre 560 will steamroll a pitiful Iris without much trouble, but then a 12HP motorcycle will accelerate more quickly than a skateboard with a broken axel, too.

Andrew Kolakowski wrote:It's all relative- yes performance is decent, but then for this money (Mackbook Pro with i9) you can buy a proper workstation with dual GTX 1080, which is at different level.If you have money then great, but otherwise it's really expensive option to work in Resolve (and still limited).

For comparison, you can get for $3400 an AlienWare 15" with a 4K screen, 32GB ram, a hexacore and overclocked i9, a 512GB nVME SSD + 1 TB 7200 RPM drive, and an nVidia 1080 MaxQ with 8GB of GDDR5... plus one Thunderbolt 3 port and one Graphics Amplifier port. The new MacBook pro SHOULD cost less than that much more powerful machine, but Apple is still limiting to an older generation 560 GPU with 4GB... bit of a joke on Apple fans if you ask me.

If you say that current machine gives you bit more power than one from 3 years and costs less then this is normal. This is how it should be. It should be actually substantially cheaper.

That's how Apple's marketing rolls. Keep the machine around until it's three generations past retirement while keeping its price artificially inflated, then pretend that the new product is "better" because it can outperform this antique that's still expensive because you believe that more expensive = better, so we kept the price high to keep YOU happy.

Rakesh Malik wrote:For comparison, you can get for $3400 an AlienWare 15" with a 4K screen, 32GB ram, a hexacore and overclocked i9, a 512GB nVME SSD + 1 TB 7200 RPM drive, and an nVidia 1080 MaxQ with 8GB of GDDR5... plus one Thunderbolt 3 port and one Graphics Amplifier port. The new MacBook pro SHOULD cost less than that much more powerful machine, but Apple is still limiting to an older generation 560 GPU with 4GB... bit of a joke on Apple fans if you ask me.

Performance wise sure, but apple to oranges as this thing ways twice as much and is more like carying around a desktop. So if you are into that sure, go for it. Now if you would compare it to a laptop that has the same design criteria like super thin metal slick and less then 2 kg for this amount of still crazy 6 core horsepower than the comparison holds. Anything else is mute for the intended target group.We all know apple tries to balance form over function so if you are looking for an extremely slick piece of laptop that still performs like a madman (but not the fastest and greatest as much as you would have liked to probably) and you have cash to spare this is still your goto laptop. Specialy if you are tied to of just prefer the osx ecosystem.

Desktops i could not care less what apple does or does not and full on in hackintoshes, but for laptops, i am still waiting for any real comparison that matches this slick style with performance. I have no problem admitting i want some nice stylistic slick laptop instead of some ungly led infested gaming piece of plastic crap even it it runs 10x as fast and is 10 times as cheap. Pitty you have to pay the price for it but such is life.I know what i like to prefer to open up in a boardroom full of bigshot executives and its not an alienware....

P.s. i do wish they would offer an option to buy it without that useless piece of crap touchbar....

Yes, it may not be as rigid as Mac and screen is rather bit worse, but it's just 2.3K euro for 6 cores and GTX 1070 (in 1.85Kg case). I think this will outperform in Resolve current base MacBook Pro 15inch, which is more like 3K euro. Some option at least. There are also other. If you need more than this then it's going to be desktop.

Dell XPS with same CPU, UHD decent screen, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD and 1050Ti GTX is also around 2300 euro (around 2kg).As far as I agree that mostly Apple laptops are quite well build, there are options in PC world which may not be as robust, but cost substantially less, so it's people's choice.

Yeah in the end thats it. I think if we assume we all pick our laptop purely with our brain, we are kidding ourselves. Large percentages will, but i bet even larger percentages select based on emotion , look, feel, fashion or whatever extra non directly rational thing.

I am 10000% rational when selecting or rather building servers/workstations, but i happily admit i am only human and are easily tempted by the flesh. All my laptops where and i guess probably for the forseeable future will be shiny overpriced macbook pro's, Same for most people i work with. Even if a few of mine died because of some apple design fault. (f*&^%^&^%ck)The amount of miles and business and just pure pleasure i got from them is unimaginable.So personal experience i would say is a big maybe even deciding factor as well.Thats why half the planet picks phone A and the other half phone B

Thanks god we live in an age were we have the luxury to bicker and complain (i also do this a lot so also guilty there) about this and get to choose what we want from so many optionsI love it. (now give me more money so i can buy some more stuff

I never knew about the bottleneck of inconsistent specs between cards. Makes sense.

Further testing revealed that monitoring in 10bit at 1080p was inconsistent while 8 bit works well. Was getting hiccups when using Smart Cache as Resolve would skip over stuff like non-graded position and scale changes. Switching to User Cache with ProRes 422HQ or 4444 for the entire sequence works perfectly.

Ordered the official Blackmagic eGPU. Will be here Wed. where I'll post results. Looking forward to the extra ports and power delivery.

Yeah in general when i do any work on my laptop, which i did for years as to lack of big workstation, i always transcoded everything to prores. Macs just loooooove prores and your experience will almost always be better then with any other codec. And if you feed your mac friend an extra gpu in the process it surely wont hurt. Have fun

I'm looking at at the new Macbook Pro not as a full-on Resolve Editing/Coloring station, but as a field computer for quick edits, and a machine to edit on at home when kids are sick, etc. My shows are typically 5 camera multicam affairs, which is killer for playback on my ancient 2012 Macbook Pro, even when transcoded to Pro Res Proxy.

I'm imagining these new machines must be able to play back 5 streams of Proxy by now.... right?

Yeah i know, but rarely people put large media files on internal storage (unless you go for broke and get the 4TB option

What i used mostly for media when working on the MBP is a cost effective fast solution of a few ssd's in a software raid0 in an small thunderbolt connected enclosure (OWC) . You get get a crazy large array for the price of the internal flash storage .

Can anyone weigh in on performance of using H.264 as a proxy codec in Resolve? I believe 15 (which I haven't tried since I'm mid-project) had optimization for h.264, and it is obviously much smaller than Pro Res Proxy. As was mentioned earlier, internal storage is the fastest and smallest form factor for field work, and I'd rather not have to carry around an extra storage RAID for offline proxy editing. Again, most of my work is 5-stream multicam.

Its always a tradeoff. Larger filesize and less cpu/gpu vs small files but more cpu/gpu utilisation.So you have to experiment what is the optimum for you specific setup, specially if you run 5 streams.DR15 (studio !!) definitely handles h264 much better then previous versions .

Glenn in my workflow on my iMac, I use my internal flash storage for the optimized media which is the last step before I add clips to the timeline in Resolve. So my original media is on a RAID 10, but edit and playback are best when my optimized media is internal flash. My sequential projects are under 500 GB so this workflow works perfectly for me.

I maxed the internal flash on the 2015 iMac at 1 TB. I would recommend the 2 TB internal flash on either of the new MacBook Pros.

Back on topic, I'm starting to realise that my utopian setup is just too expensive and not worth it. I don't like the idea of carrying around a 5000 euro laptop that is not even 100% up to the job for post production using 4.6k raw cinema dng. I like the idea of having one machine for all of my work, just having to plug in 1 cable, and the laptop charges, external display is connected, egpu, audio interface, keyboard, mouse, ... Much like how docking stations used to work. For the same money I can buy three equally good workstations and start giving training coarses on them. The way it is now, is just too expensive. Sometimes minimalism costs more

Blackmagic eGPU arrived early. Did a few tests with HD and 4K projects. HD worked well with monitoring. 4K stuttered too much to be usable. 4K seemed to be okay when not monitoring. Still drives me crazy that you're forced to used an IO card for monitoring, but I get the purpose and it works fine on the two workstations. Ended up returning it to the Apple store and bought another Vega Frontier and Sonnet 650 for the laptop.

The build quality was excellent. A little bigger than a trashcan Mac Pro. Ran totally silent even under load. The load on the eGPU playing back cached UHD ProRes422HQ footage was a little under 50%. Actual caching using Metal used the card at 100%, but that's true of the Vega Frontier too.

Good news is that using Metal allows full utilization of however many eGPUs you have attached, so it appears to scale linearly when adding cards. OpenCL never got past ~70% on any card regardless of configuration. Can't wait for the final v15 release as it looks like Blackmagic put more work into it's Meta 2 implementation.

I love those excuses "not optimised for 6 cores" In case of Resolve this may be very visible during export, specially when internal GPU will be used. Those Mac will be crazy hot during Resolve exports.

Peter Fizgal wrote:My only whish now is that Hackintoshes were easier to build.

Compared to a few years ago its a walk in the park. Providing you pick your parts with care it can be a plug and play almost or (if you just fling it together) a nightmare .My last one was a few clicks, boot and done. But you need to invest in research (tonymac is your friend)

After seeing the i9 throttling video I downloaded the Intel Gadget and watched it as Resolve rendered a timeline. The i9 frequency hovered between 3.3 and 4.1ghz the whole time and leaned toward 4ghz while the Vega FE as being maxed out. This is obviously the exact opposite of the results in the video.

I was using an eGPU and wasn’t using battery so they weren’t contributing to the internal heat, allowing the cpu to run hotter for longer. The benchmark in the video was with .r3ds in Premiere which has never been a good combo on a Mac.

If you want to do rendering in the field on battery, probably go with a bigger PC or older MBP. If you want something smaller to dock at your desk with an eGPU then a MBP works great. TB3 is nice, but I still miss built in USBa and HDMI ports.

I’m still feeling skeptical in spite of your findings. For one thing, nearly everyone buying these new MacBook Pros will not be buying the eGPU. I’m concluding the eGPU and the 13” i5 may be a reasonably good value among generally bad values solely due to inadequate cooling. And I’m very Pro Apple and macOS!

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Last edited by rick.lang on Wed Jul 18, 2018 10:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.